When Is the Best Time to See the Northern Lights in Svalbard?

From mid-November to the end of January there is no daylight in Longyearbyen, not even civil twilight at noon, and any clear evening in those weeks is a chance. Visit Svalbard gives the season as late September to mid-March and the best hours as 18:00 to midnight; from early March the nights grow too light. Book an evening early in your stay, so that a cloudy one leaves you another. Arctic Footsteps’ Longyearbyen: Northern Lights Adventure by Car costs from US$184 a person (checked November 2026).

On 26 November 2026, 20 January and 17 February 2027 it started at 3:30 PM, 7:00 PM or 8:30 PM and cost US$184.04 a person on each date (GetYourGuide, checked November 2026). Free cancellation runs up to 24 hours before.

Three seasons from one tourist organisation

Visit Svalbard’s pages give three different answers, because they describe different things:

Visit Svalbard (en.visitsvalbard.com), read November 2026.

Yr, the weather service of NRK and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, says “Polar night until 16 Feb.” on its Longyearbyen page. Read together: the lights need a dark sky, and Svalbard’s sky is dark enough from about late September or October to early or mid-March.

Month by month

Computed for Longyearbyen (78.22 N, 15.65 E), Norwegian time (UTC+1). Full darkness means the Sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon; the computation is good to about a minute.

October is the twilight month. The last sunrise of 2026 is on 26 October, and on 15 October the sky is fully dark for under five hours a night. Arctic Footsteps’ car tour has reviews from late September and October 2026, so the season for the tours starts before the polar night does.

From November to January the Sun stays below the horizon. In mid-November even midday stays darker than civil twilight, and around 21 December the sky is fully dark for more than 15 hours out of 24. These are the weeks Visit Svalbard means when it says you may see the lights in the middle of the day if you are lucky, though daytime displays can be weaker than evening ones.

February brings the light back: civil twilight around midday from about 30 January, the first sunrise on 16 February, and about 8 hours of full darkness by mid-month. The evening tours still run in the dark: Arctic Footsteps’ car tour was on sale on 17 February 2027 at all three start times.

March is short. Full darkness drops to 3.6 hours on 1 March and, by our computation, is gone from about 5 March, which fits Visit Svalbard’s “mid-March” end. On 24 March 2027 only one of the six tours was on sale, for two adults at 9:00 PM: Svalbard Photography AS's photo safari. See & Explore's photography tour and Frostbite Expeditions AS's van tour were not on sale on 17 February 2027 either (GetYourGuide, checked November 2026).

The moon

A bright moon lightens the sky and can hide fainter displays. One guest on See & Explore's photography tour in December 2025 wrote that cloud hid the lights but the full moon made for good landscape photos. If you can choose your dates, the week around a new moon gives the darkest sky.

Computed (mean lunar phases); the true phase can fall up to about half a day either side, so a date can move by one. Yr’s Longyearbyen page gives the next new and full moon to the minute.

Cloud decides the night

No weather service we found publishes how often Longyearbyen’s winter sky is clear, so we print no figure. The reviews show what it means in practice. Five of the 37 reviews on See & Explore's photography tour mention cloud. A guest in October 2025 had the opposite problem: clear sky, weak activity, and only a faint glimpse. Two of the eight reviews on Arctic Footsteps’ car tour, both from October 2026, say cloud or bad weather hid the lights.

That is why the date of your trip matters less than the number of evenings you have. Reading the forecast explains what the forecast can and cannot tell you a day or three ahead.

Which evening to book

The first or second evening of your stay. If cloud rules it out, you still have time for another, and every northern lights tour on this site allows free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Booking See & Explore's photography tour close to the date gives you a more accurate weather forecast, and that tour gives no refund if you do not see the lights or if it is cloudy or snowing, so know its terms before you pick it.

For a first evening, the Arctic Footsteps tour by car is the one to book: three start times, hotel pickup, up to 8 guests.

See dates for the evening by car

The tours compared sets out the other five, from the 2-hour car tour for up to 6 guests to the private snowmobile night.